Question of the Day

Should Trump keep Pence on the ticket in 2020?

Transparent singles

"Single women have a request for Hollywood: Stop depicting us as desperate and lonely.

"Or as oversexed urbanites.

"Or as stalkers.

"And would it be possible for the girl to not get the guy in the end and still be happy?

"The growth in the ranks of single women in recent decades … has created a new cultural phenomenon. Today, some 40 percent of all adult women are single.

"In Tinseltown and on bookstore shelves, the media are beginning to present more nuanced portrayals of these women from the self-sufficiency of CBS's 'That's Life' to the candidness of 'Bridget Jones's Diary' ….

"Despite the popularity of 'Ally McBeal' and 'Sex in the City,' single women say they feel they are often a transparent part of society, considered neither complete nor financially viable… .

"Part of the problem is that society is still figuring out what to do with women who aren't following the traditional married-with-children pattern.

"About 43 million women … are over 18 and single… . [T]he percentages of unmarried women ages 25 to 29, and 30 to 34 have roughly tripled between 1970 and 1998. The median age of marriage for women has also gone up from about 20 in 1960 to 25 in 1998."

Scalawag empire

"Seven Georgia middle school students received a one-day suspension last week. What was their crime? Their T-shirts had a Confederate battle flag on them… .

"History is a repetitive creature, and what's happening in Georgia and elsewhere is far from new. We may construe it as a less-potent variation on England's ethnocidal campaign against Ireland… .

"England began passing the Penal Laws in 1695 under William of Orange. These enactments converted the 'barbarous wretches' and 'devil papists' … into a colonial caste: deprived of religious liberty, disarmed, disenfranchised, land ownership gutted.

"The Penal Laws were an imperial attempt to abolish Irish identity… .

"If Ireland had to contend with cultural imperialism from a foreign force, the South's greatest adversaries are within its own borders. It is not a Yankee juggernaut that today assails the South, but a scalawag contingent."

Inquiring minds

"Just what is our foreign policy in Asia? Inquiring minds would like to know. If it is to establish hegemony in the region, I'd like to know when Americans had a chance to vote on that policy.

"Secretary of State Colin Powell said we would continue spy flights to 'protect our national security interests.'

" 'And frankly to protect the national security interests of our friends in the region.' …

"Does Powell mean we are prepared to go to war to protect the independence of Korea? Of Japan? Of Taiwan? If he does, when were the American people ever asked if they wanted their sons or grandchildren to die 12,000 miles away to protect somebody else's country? …

"The answer to all these questions is that Americans are handed a foreign policy without so much as a by-your-leave. We are supposed, sheep-like, to accept the wisdom of the elders of the foreign-policy establishment and do nothing but obey… .

"It is not in the least bit necessary for the United States to establish hegemony in [Asia] in order for our country to remain free and prosperous. The only war Americans should ever fight is in defense of this country and no other."

Charley Reese, writing on "No justification whatsoever for spying on China," in yesterday's in the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel